I am watching you.
You stand frozen, somewhat dumbfounded, in the middle of my adorably decorated room.
“Uhhm—”
I put my hand on my chest and steady my breathing.
I tell myself to calm down.
I should have been able to predict that this would happen.
That’s because you and I — we’re having the same dream.
Of course it would be possible that someday, you might find your way here. After all, I’ve thought about what it would be like to come face-to-face with you like this, how I should behave — I’ve even practiced it.
But, it’s like unexpectedly happening upon a celebrity in town.
I feel so flustered.
“W-Welcome. No, that’s not it, this isn’t a store or anything that formal — uhm.”
Not sure of what to say, I stand here, flustered as you stare at me.
No one acts the way they think they would within their dreams.
“It must have been cold out there. Well, my place isn’t very exciting, but feel free to rest here.” I motion toward a cushion over in the corner of the room.
You show not even a hint of a reaction. I start to feel uneasy once again.
I have no clue what you’re thinking — with no hint as to what’s going on inside your head, you wander over expressionlessly to the bookshelf on my wall and begin to investigate.
It doesn’t feel very good to have someone just walk up and start touching things in one’s room. It feels like a breach of manners — but I guess that’s what one might do in the relaxed environment of a friend’s room. At least, after seeing the friendly expression on your face, that’s the impression I get.
“I don’t really have any books that are that interesting. The ones over there are—” I cut in behind you, peering over your shoulder. All of the spines look the same.
Next to the bookshelf, a picture of a large creature, like an elephant or a whale, done in a cute style of painting, is placed in a frame upon the wall.
It gives off a sense of security, like having a mighty ally.
That’s right, I want to be someone who gives you a sense of security, who gives you a place where you can rest.
Just walking and walking must tire you out. There’s no way you’ve had a chance to recover.
That’s exactly why.
“You understand right? All of these — they’re your dream diary. Your ‘yume nikki.’”
For some reason, you just keep meandering about in front of the bookshelf, so I take out one of the books and open it.
What’s written within are several words heavy with meaning.
Red umbrella. Stoplight. You must remember having actually written these words.
However, several other words are there, written with distorted letters, as if done in the depths of darkness.
Frog. Witch. Lamp. And so on, that you can generally grasp the meaning of. However, there seem to be some unpleasant or frightful words mixed in as well — like knife. Severed head. Medamaude — eyeball hand.
“It seems that you’ve recorded some important words here that have left an impression upon you. Dreams can show us the depths of our unconscious mind, though we quickly forget them. Within them are the things so thoroughly attached to your heart that they cling to it like an image burnt onto a computer screen. So that’s why you’ve written them down so frantically.”
I open the book and hold it out in front of you.
I clear my throat and continue.
“I’ve been thinking about a lot of things. Well, we have time — I’m not doing anything, and I wanna find out how I ended up lost in this nightmare. I want to escape if at all possible — it’s the same for you, right?”
I take out another book.
It’s a technical book, but it is filled with a lot of blank space. There are empty spaces here and there, as if to reflect the information we don’t know. It’s like it only contains the bits we can remember of books we read a long time ago. So we have no way of knowing whether what’s written in that book is right or wrong, a misconstruction, or a fabrication of our own making.
I indicate both the book and dream diary as I speak.
“For example, you had that stoplight. That straight path in the dense forest, the corpse, that monster that was farther in — I think that those are symbols that in Freudian psychology would be used in dream interpretations,” I state proudly, like a small child sharing a piece of learned knowledge.
I put a heavy amount of zeal into what I say.
“Freud, the so-called father of psychology and the one responsible for establishing a system of analysis for it, said that dreams are the product of the repressed unconscious mind. The unconscious mind is a collection of all the things we seal away in the depths of our hearts as we live our lives — things like repressed stress, desire, and conflict. Like what’s left after the contents of a pot are boiled down.”
That monster at the end of that straight path.
It’s like a wild beast kept within your heart, sealed with pockets of hatred, desire, and malice, things you don’t need in your waking life, but can’t help feeling.
So when you dream, you have to confront the beast within — your unconscious mind.
And so you run away from it by waking up. Looking away. But that’s just fine. And those who confront the monster and aren’t armed with psychological knowledge are chewed up and swallowed by the monster.
“So what we call logic is just suppressing instinct. Mental illness or other such illnesses are from when the monster cannot be suppressed and those things rise to the surface — the hero known as reason is defeated, and the monster breaks through the walls of the fortress of your heart. That’s Freud’s explanation, at least. That’s one facet of the truth, but at least it’s easy enough to understand.”
Dreams = the monster = repressed instincts and desire. And so we humans must use the blades, armor, and chains known as reason to fight and hold back the monster to get through our lives.
Though, this is a rather violent way of thinking about it. This complicated, dualistic battle between reason and instinct exposes our heart and gives birth to a great deal of discord.
Freud basically named this repressed beast “lust.” All of what appears in dreams are symbols of the phallus or sexual intercourse. They’re rather coercive and extremely vulgar. There’s a lot that is explained with this, but that shouldn’t be all there is to it.
Because monsters aren’t the only things that appear in our dreams.
Moreover, if we accept Freud’s system, then people who have a mental illness would be labeled “weak,” “pathetic,” or “losers.” And his suggested solutions were overly simplistic, comic hero-esque advice like “do your best” and “you need to get stronger.”
No one can get strong like that. Doing your best isn’t enough — there are some monsters you cannot defeat, no matter what. However, in Freud’s philosophy, making that assertion would only result in one being labeled as a “weakling.”